warhammer 40k 8th edition rulebook table of contents

Personally, the editions that followed, 4th and 5th, were the game at its peak. 3rd edition radically overhauled movement, shooting and combat in true 40K style it eradicated its roots in Warhammer Fantasy becoming its own creature entirely some would argue this was a start of a slippery slope. What we saw with the first three editions of the game was a stripping back of the rule system and move from skirmish to a larger scale system.

This is what is known as the ‘grimdark’ setting of Warhammer 40k. And amongst this melting pot of mayhem, the daemons of the warp (a parallel universe of madness and chaos) seek to corrupt and destroy everything. Throughout the worlds of the Imperium – traitors and mutants seek to overthrow the current oppressive rulers. Vicious aliens gnaw at the edges of human space – seeking expansion, extermination or to devour humanity. In a nutshell, The ruler of the Imperium is a barely living husk encased in a life support system, whose will is interpreted by a council of bureaucrats and priests, who make brutal edicts uncaring of their effects on much of humanity. Whilst the original 40K universe proposed a dark vision of the future (think of a sci-fi universe designed by Iron Maiden for its first iteration), the subsequent revisions have embraced the gothic and bleak going full death metal.

The setting proved extremely popular and has sprawled into multiple novels, sourcebooks animated movies, video games building upon the violent history of the fictitious Imperium. The game was designed as a skirmish storytelling system – with the rules encouraging a games master role to design scenarios and battlefields for the other players to fight over. This adapted the rule system of the Warhammer Fantasy game and placed it into the sprawling universe of the Imperium – a vast human stellar empire. Thirty years ago, designer Rick Priestley, introduced the world to the first edition of Warhammer 40,000, also known as Rogue Trader (also known as 40k). And that’s all I’m going to say about that right now. Over the years they have been vilified and justifiably so, however they of late are trying finally to move with the times and fix some of the sins of the past.

I shall briefly pause for you to praise or vent your spleen about the good/evil that Games Workshop is responsible for. Well, a new version of their Warhammer 40,000 miniatures war game has just been released and trust me, they really want you to know about it. For it is here that the goliath of the UK games industry, Games Workshop, is based. Unless you have been living under a rock (or perhaps deep in some form of cave system), you’ll have noticed that there has been rather a lot of noise coming from the direction of Nottingham.

Warhammer 40k 8th edition rulebook table of contents